'Don't trivialise it' Tessa Jowell passionately defends Tony Blair over Iraq War
LABOUR grandee Dame Tessa Jowell defiantly stood by Tony Blair in the wake of the Chilcot inquiry, insisting she still agreed with the former Prime Minister's decision to invade Iraq.
Tessa Jowell adamant that Iraq war was justified
Mr Blair was heavily criticised in the long-awaited report into the Iraq War, with one particularly concerning passage suggesting the intelligence of Iraqi weapons appeared to be lifted from a Hollywood film.
A section of the inquiry’s findings found that MI6 feared a source might have taken inspiration from 'The Rock', a 1996 thriller starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage.
But former London MP Tessa Jowell claimed going to war was necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC, she said: "Don't ever forget the suffering before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein inflicted on his people."
Presenter Nick put to her that 'The Rock' was one of the main reasons the country went to war, to which Dame Tessa retorted: "I've never heard of this film.
“Please don’t suggest that the decision to go to war was based on a movie.
"Please don't trivialise it."
She insisted: "Look instead at the boasts of Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's Foreign Minister, who would say they use chemical agents in order to control the Jews and the Persians.
"Or the Australian weapons inspectors, who said Saddam Hussein used chemical agents as a form of crowd control.
"Talk to the journalists who were first in Halabja, where Saddam Hussein had murdered 5,000 Kurds, his own people, with mustard gas."
After a seven-year wait the committee chaired by former Whitehall mandarin Sir John Chilcot presented 12 volumes containing 2.6 million words of damning detail.
The inquiry found the war was unnecessary, based on misinformation about weapons of mass destruction, was badly planned, poorly conducted and an almost complete failure.
It was pointed out that the war was the first invasion and occupation of a sovereign state by the UK since the Second World War and while the report did not rule out future military action it warned that the “grave” mistakes of the conflict must not be repeated.
